Showing posts with label Plumbing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Plumbing. Show all posts

Wednesday, 22 April 2015

Time for an update!

It has been a while since my last post! My apologies for that! I have been in and out of Doctor's surgeries and hospitals for the last fortnight and therefore not quite up to sitting in front of a computer.

Up until the weekend, very little had happened at the house. Internally, the painting has been finished, as has the plastering - all this will need to be touched up due to other trades who simply could care less about the damage and mess they cause (enough about that for now - I intend to do a whole post on my gripes at the end of the build). Externally, the bricks finally started late last week, however they were moving at a snail's pace. On Saturday, a whole gang of brickies arrived and that changed! They managed to get all the straight lines of the house completed up to head height. Over the last couple of days, there has been slow but steady progress.

In the last 24 hours, we have seen a massive amount of internal work get done. The baths, showers and toilets are in. The internal plumbing has been done. A lot of the external plumbing has been done. The extra cabinetry has been put in to place. It is almost finished and will look amazing!

I will leave the rest of the progress to be shown via the photos below.

The bricks have started! Yay!

 But there's so many!
 Thankfully, we asked (and of course paid for) bricks above back windows instead of concrete sheets. It looks so much better!
 The opposite end of the house - the only place where there are no soffits.
 The fully painted Media Room with the high gloss paint on the doors.
 Family Room and view down the hallway.
 Our Bedroom fully painted.
 Ensuite with the plastic removed.
 Where the bath goes.
 The Ensuite shower.
Ensuite - the bath on the left and the toilet on the right
 Looking back into the bedroom from the Ensuite.
 Main bathroom shower.
 The kitchen uncovered.
 More Kitchen.
 The bricks finished on the far side.
 The gas bottles at the back of the house.
 The back wall.
 The main bathroom shower done!
 I love these shower heads!
 Main bathroom bath being tested.
 Bethany's bedroom.
 Ensuite shower & bath.
 More Ensuite.
Ensuite looking through to the WIR.
 The Walk-In Robe.
 Our toilets! We will have three! 

Monday, 12 January 2015

Back from Holidays

It was a morning very akin to Christmas today! My last (only) conversation with our Site Supervisor suggested that work would finish up before Christmas and then start up on the 12th of January. With that in mind, we went to bed last night wondering what may happen the next day.

Getting up this morning and gazing out the bedroom window as I have been doing every morning since the site was cut, I saw three men in High Vis workwear and a ute parked on the site. The plumbers/drainers were on site - it was going to be a big Day 1 for 2015!

All day showers threatened to halt work. In fact the Gold Coast copped flooding last night and yet we didn't have a drop. Today, many showers went past us (very close) but unfortunately, the luck ran out at about 3:45pm! With all due credit, the plumbers stayed on the longest, working through the storm, however eventually they called it quits and left.

So after Day 6, we had:
  • Drainage (sewerage & grey water - stormwater still to come) installed, approved by council and backfilled.
  • A new property pole to run electricity directly to the new house. (Apparently you are only allowed one access point for electricity, we are losing the connection to our existing house. As such we have had to run cable from the new house to our existing house - at our expense - $5k - and dig a trench 600mm deep between houses which worked out about 50 metres - thankfully for $300 I could hire a dingo and get the job done relatively cheap as quotes were coming in from $1500+. In short there's $5300 that we hadn't budgeted for!      
  • Conduit was connected (no wire yet) and runs from the new property pole.
  • Some debris at the back of the cut site was removed and pulled to one side as promised by the SS.
  • Rubble pits were marked out ready to be dug out tomorrow.
One drama popped up today and it makes me wonder what would have happened if I wasn't on site. One of the plumbers called out to my on the verandah to confirm that a dodgy piece of poly pipe (which was uncovered during the excavation works and was running water so we put a tap on it to stop the flow) was the hook up point to the new house. I said no and was told that they cannot run from the street as there was no allowance for this and that a connection needed to be found within 12 metres of the house. A quick look through our contract and then a call to Metricon quickly revealed that the plumber was wrong (thankfully). I went out and explained this information to the plumber and then we roughly marked out where the trench from the meter box would have to go.


 The boy on his toy!
 First sight out the window!
 The first cut of the soil
 Almost finished the backfilling - hurry the rain is coming!
 The conduit for the trenches!
 Every day seems to end in puddles!
 So many pipes!
Our new property pole!